Do I Live in a Zoo?

Everybody was having a lovely day until around 4:30 this afternoon. That's when the Alphas decided that everybody under 4 feet tall could take a bath together. This is nothing new, the Things and Horton usually bathe together; Horton splashes all of the water out of the tub while the Things play with their toys. Today, Horton got out of the tub early and was hanging out with me and Alpha Female in his Hugh Hefner robe while the girls continued playing supervised by Alpha Male. Suddenly, we all heard a shrieking sound coming from the bathroom. Alpha Female and I rushed in to see what was the matter. We discovered Alpha Male prying Thing 2's teeth off of Thing 1's finger. We have a biter!

Alpha Female took Thing 2 to time out while Alpha Male checked Thing 1 to make sure she hadn't contracted rabies. Thing 2 then spent the next 20 minutes in time out. She could have gotten out about 19 minutes sooner, but she refused to say, "I'm sorry." After she finally gave her sister a hug and apologized for her animal behavior (even I've never bitten anybody on purpose), she spent the rest of the evening running around the house naked. And I mean completely naked. Just as naked as I am right now. She watched TV naked, she played naked, and she ate dinner naked. It's barbaric, really.

If I ever write a book about child rearing, I will target it to the parents of 18 - 36 month old kids and I'll title it "Domesticating Your Child." I hope the Alphas read it, I've got a couple of pointers for them.

Happy New Year

A year ago, Thing 1 was just starting to be potty trained, Thing 2 couldn't walk, Horton wasn't born, and I blogged regularly. Now, Thing 1 can write her name, Thing 2 is potty trained, Horton can crawl, and I'm happy if I blog once a month. I'm not sure what this year has in store for us, but I hope it involves more food and more sleep.


Christmas was fun around here. My best friend is a cat I've never met and she sent me a Christmas present which I ate while the humans were opening their presents. So I'm not really sure what each of them got, as my attention was focused on eating. But I do know that we have a lot more stuff in the house now. Thing 1 is sleeping in a beautiful princess bed, Thing 2 is out of her crib and in another beautiful princess bed, and the pretty pink flower curtains in Horton's room have finally been replaced with manly blue animal curtains. The Alphas are all proud of themselves because Horton has a boy room now. I don't remind them that he is nearly 7 months old and most babies have gender appropriate rooms waiting for them upon their arrival.


Looking at this picture, it appears that his new manly room has inspired him to become a trucker.

I'm Still Here

Alpha Male asked me today if I had stopped blogging. It was kind of a weird question to get from him. He usually asks me things like, "Are you hungry?" or "Do you need to go out?" You know, questions I can answer by jumping around and running to a particular place in the house. I'm not sure why he asked if I had stopped blogging, it's not like I can talk or even shake my head. Sometimes he's just weird I guess. But the answer is no, I haven't stopped, just slowed down a little. What do you expect from a seventy year old living with three kids under four?


Of course, there is lots to share from my family. Maybe too much, I don't know where to start. I'll try to catch you up by sharing my very own list of things I've heard in my house during the last month.


10. "Thing 1, don't eat your boogers."

9. "Thing 2, don't eat your boogers."

8. "Girls, don't sit on your brother."

7. "NNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!" This is usually said by one of the Things, but I've also heard it come from Alphas coupled with a huge mess and a hint of despair in their voices.

6. I'm not sure how to spell this one, but in my house it is spoken very loudly and in an unthinkably high pitch, "AAEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII." I am pretty sure it translates to "NNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!" and I'm pretty sure Thing 2 is the only one capable of producing this sound.

5. "You don't need to feed Gauss, he already ate." I hate it when I hear this.

4. "It looks like a tornado came through this place!" If I had a dollar for every time I heard this...

3. "Thing 2 is waking me up." Thing 1 says this after she has been screaming and protesting bed for several minutes and then Thing 2 rustles her sheets as she turns over in her crib. Oh, if the Things only understood irony.

2. Alpha Male: "Who spilled all this water all over the bathroom floor?"
Alpha Female: "Uh, water's not yellow."

1. Alpha Female: "Wow! Horton really is going to be crawling before Christmas."
Alpha Male: "He's a beefcake."

The Day After

I hope everybody had a great Halloween. I know I did. I love it when the doorbell rings, it gives me a great excuse to bark for an awkwardly long time.

Last week, Alpha Female went to New York City for work. She participated in mediating and settling a patent infringement case for a client. She was in a great mood after she was done working. She called Alpha Male and I could hear her blathering on about how much she loved her job and how happy she was that she went to law school. She got home very late last Friday night, actually it was very early Saturday morning. We were already asleep here. I was the only one that got up to greet her, so I was the only one that saw her hide something under her coat before she went to bed. A couple of hours later, I was awoken to the sounds of Alpha Male walking around the house in the middle of the night. This is something he never does, so I stuck close by to make sure he wasn't going to try to drive in his sleep or something. Again, I was the only witness to him finding the box that was hidden under Alpha Female's coat and I watched him dance around the kitchen like an eight-year-old on Christmas morning. What I found out later was that Alpha Female bought him a camera while she was in NYC. And not just any camera, but a camera he had been pining for for a long time and is out of stock almost everywhere (including the first two stores that Alpha Female visited to buy it). That's very nice, but where is the appreciation for all of the hard work, support, and sacrifices that I made while she was in school?

What does this all have to do with Halloween you may ask. Well, because Alpha Male had the camera, he was able to take these photos and videos of Snow White, Ariel, and Sleepy on Halloween:

Snow White, Ariel, and Sleepy Enjoy Halloween 2009 from gauss dogg on Vimeo.

Self Taught

It's been so long since I've posted an update that I'm not sure where to start. I haven't been able to post in a while because I'm exhausted by all the kids in this house and spending my spare time sleeping. Of course, as always the Alphas will tell you that they are handling things just fine, but I'll tell you the truth. The house is constantly a wreck, the dirty clothes hampers runeth over, the grass is about two feet high, and instead of doing the dishes the Alphas just bought more sippy cups. If the Alphas would just turn the football games off for a couple of hours maybe they could make this house presentable. But I digress from the big news of the day.

Thing 2 has potty trained herself! After her bath last night she did the potty dance. Alpha Female thought this was kind of weird since the Alphas have made no effort to encourage her use of the potty. Luckily I was able to whip my stenograph out in time to record the following conversation:

Alpha Female: Thing 2, do you need to use the potty?

Thing 2: Yeah.

Alpha Female: Go tell Daddy you need to use the potty. (Way to pass the buck!)

Alpha Male: Thing 2, do you need to use the potty?

Thing 2: Yeah. (There's a lot of repetition in this house.)

Thing 2: (Sitting on potty.) (Lots of grunting and funny faces.)

Alpha Male: (quietly) I think she's going to poop!

Alpha Female: No way! That would be very weird, we haven't even started potty training her.

Thing 1: (closing the bathroom door) She needs her privacy!

Thing 2: (more grunting)

Alpha Male: Hurray! She did it! Thing 2, you went poopy in the potty!

Alpha Female: Hurry, give her some chocolate! (I have know idea why she said that, I figure it was just a random comment.)

Thing 1: Yay!

Thing 2: Yeah.

At this point I packed up the stenograph, but she followed up with refusing to wear a diaper until she went pee pee on the potty and she used the potty again tonight. It wasn't all that long ago that Thing 1 did this and the Alphas are weirdly excited again. I saw Alpha Female bring in big boxes of diapers, diaper wipes, and pull-ups from the store today. Why would they want to give all that up?

Where did I put that again?

Thing 1 had a doctor's appointment today to check on her broken arm. Do you see anything weird in this x-ray? (Besides Alpha Female and Thing 1 holding hands.)



In the bottom left of the picture, you can see a foreign object in the cast. How did it get there? Thing 1 must have shoved it in. Fortunately, as it turns out, Thing 1 had to have the little cast replaced with a big cast that goes to her shoulder. When the little cast was removed, the Alphas were pleased to discover that the foreign object was the cover for the mouse pointer on Alpha Female's laptop. They had been looking for that for days. Alpha Female had even asked Thing 1 where it was and Thing 1 said that Thing 2 had taken it. She was lying! I hope the Alphas remember this and don't believe her the next time she says that I ate her missing food.

Owww! My Arm!

I thought the big news this month would be that Horton is finally sleeping through the night. It has been a week now without the Alphas getting up to feed him in the middle of the night. And he actually has a reasonable schedule. Asleep by 9:00 p.m., awake after 7:00 a.m. And with how much Alpha Female has been fixated on and looking forward to this momentous accomplishment, I thought I would have to listen to her celebrate and talk about nothing else for weeks. But Thing 1 managed to top Horton's accomplishment.


You are probably wondering, "How is that possible?" Well, she acquired super powers. Hard to believe, but it's true. The problem is she only acquired partial super powers. She has the ability to jump over sofas in a single bound, but her bones aren't hard enough to withstand the landing. That is why Alpha Female had to rush to the emergency room after receiving a somewhat misleading phone call letting her know that there "might" be something wrong with Thing 1's arm. Might be? I've never seen an arm all twisted around like that when there wasn't something wrong. Actually, I've just never seen an arm all twisted around like that. And unless she is Elastigirl, the bones weren't going to pop back in place by themselves. For your enjoyment, I have included a picture of her singing and dancing around the x-ray room after her multiple x-rays, but you might not want to look too closely at her right hand.


So after spending the afternoon at the emergency room, they received the worse news of the day, Thing 1 wouldn't be able to eat until after the cast was put on the next day at 2:30 P.M.!!!!!! What were they going to do when she got hungry? Of course she would ask for apple juice in the morning and that Thing does not like to hear, "No." If it had been me, I would have opted for the mangled arm rather than the missed breakfast. But Alpha Female is not so reasonable and decided to distract Thing 1 from her hunger pains by buying her things. And to make it worse (I just don't understand Alpha Female) she decided to make a show of solidarity by not eating or drinking until Thing 1 was able to.

They left the house around 8:00 a.m. with a mission to not notice the hunger pains. The library and the ducks outside the library occupied them for a while, but then the spending began. They went to the mall and bought jewelry, got a haircut, made a doll and named her Lucy, and bought ponytail holders. Then they traveled over to Toys R Us and bought halloween costumes for the Things and walked every aisle while Thing 1 pointed to each toy and said, "You can get me this for my birthday!" I think Alpha Female agreed to buy pretty much the whole store for Thing 1's fourth birthday.


They arrived at the hospital at the appointed time and drew pictures, read books, and watched cartoons for about three hours before Thing 1 and Lucy were happily carried back to the operating room. About a half hour later Alpha Female joined them in recovery and noticed that both Dana and Lucy had beautiful pink casts on their right arms! I think that Alpha Female is in love with the entire surgical staff at the hospital because of that thoughtful gesture.


Thing 1 is recovering beautifully. In fact, she thought that yesterday was her birthday because she got so much stuff. And she has been eating candy nonstop since coming home from the hospital. I've counted at least four lollipops today. Is that what it takes around here, do I have to break my leg to get an extra dog biscuit?